The Silent Child

Overview

A deaf 4-year-old girl named Libby lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her to use sign language to communicate.

Rating

2 Reviews

• 

  Aliakbar Avani

  9 Mar 11, 2023

  **A perspective to the Silent Child (2017)** **Introduction:** The short film The Silent Child (2017), 20m, a brilliant low-budget film ($10k) made by Chris Overton, with a pleasant play and a fantastic multi-layered screenplay of his wife, Rachel Shenton (British), great cinematography by Ali Farahani (Iranian), and impressive music composed by Amir Konjani (Iranian), was truly deserved to achieve the title of the best short film at the Oscars 2018. **Plot theme:** The theme of the first layer of the film can be seen as a detailed and pathological approach to the problems of deaf or hard-of-hearing children. Only the very same sentence that Joanna hears from Paul that the reason why she was called to this house, hasn’t been to understand Libby but to help Sue feel more comfortable in controlling affairs, can represent the depth of the problem of these children! The filmmaker plays his impressive role well by presenting brief but tragic statistics in the end credits of the film. Although this layer of the film is capable of a detailed critique of the exact details of the plot, cinematography, and music of the film, I prefer to have a metatextual look at the symbolic theme (second layer) of the movie in my short opportunity because it may be in shadows and less visible. **Metatextual layer**: In my view, this film with its elaborate use of symbols and characters, expresses another story of reason in opposition with love, and warns against the fall of the meaning of life and the tragedy of forgetting love! Some of these used symbols are: **The mother** as the motherland, procreation, and affairs of sensory including reason. She is an entire and full-time controller who is very willing to turn anything into her own language and logic, in order to master it. With this ignorance, she misses the opportunities in front of her to accept the special language of love (Libby) and enjoy this tenderness, and even considers the messenger of this truth (Joanna) as a disturbing threat. **The deaf child** (Libby) as the element of Love, the innocent child that is silent from speech but susceptible to miracles, she is from an unknown lineage and the result of the bond of odd but alien love! **The helper girl in red** (Joanna) as an element of femininity, who understands love and finds it (Libby) easily behind every tree while the closest members of her family are unable to understand her. **The family and society** as ego and superego, a language structure powered by laws and ideals, but just bring busyness and coldness of daily routine, and its members only seek to weaken the other and acquire a position of greater power and control. **Sign-language** as a symbol of the intuitive love language. **The school**, a symbol of prison show which imposes a dictatorial regime on its captives to restrain love and homogenize all members of the society of the modern world. The filmmaker has depicted the presence and absence of love on the roads of Joanna's route with sensory and visual presentation, and the audience subconsciously finds the atmosphere of the movie foggy or clear in accordance with hiding or finding love during the story. It can be seen that all the names of the story have been chosen very carefully according to the mentioned symbols. By reflecting on the roots and the origins of the names of the characters such as _Libby, Joanna, Sue and Paul_ can find the deep connection of these choices in the role of the types of the story. This approach even leads us to the third and more sublime layer of the film's theme, which is not possible in this review. **A thought-provoking open-end:** The intelligent and brilliant open-end in the film after the romantic display of expressing love between Libby and Joanna from behind the bars of the school (the prison) raises this question for the audience: What will the end be like? Do you really want to know what happens to Libby? Will this remain a full-blown tragedy? The answer is up to you, it depends on what you will do to free up your Libby... **I highly recommend watching this well-made movie. My rating is 8 out of 10**

• 

  CinemaSerf

  7 Mar 21, 2024

  I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I've recently been suffering from one of those head colds that goes for your ears! It's meant that for the last few days I've been able to hear next to nothing. What that has meant is I've noticed just how awkward and difficult life can be when you cannot hear, or that sounds are muffled and indistinct. Imagine, then, how much more difficult life is for deaf four year old "Libby" (Maisie Sly). She lives with her family - a loving but busy bunch who don't really know where to start with the young girl. Then a social worker "Jo" (Rachel Shenton - who also wrote this) arrives on the scene determined to help bring the youngster out of her shell by teaching her sign language to complement her skilled lip-reading. There are early signs of success for "Libby" but heads start to butt with mother "Sue" (Rachel Fielding) beginning to almost seem to resent the relationship that's emerging between her daughter and her new friend. Some of that drama does come across as just a little contrived here, especially when the girl starts going to a school where she is clearly struggling, but the general and sensitive thrust of this drama does touch on issues of loneliness and isolation as well as guilt and lack of comprehension. Apparently 90% of kids born deaf have hearing parents and siblings so it's a tough learning curve for everyone and nobody ever likes asking for help! This suggests that, though difficult, this need never be a fear for anyone.